rooster wrote:PST, I am in a similar situation as you. My retiree health insurance (nonvested plan) is sponsored by my former employer who is near bankruptcy (Yeah, they should have kept me. ). Last week I had calls from some of their competitors speculating that the filing has become imminent. Now I have preexisting conditions, so I don't know what my family will do if the filing comes. So I am a target for scare tactics.
But I don't want to wreck medical care in the US because of my problems!!!!
PST, You are correct that employer-provided health insurance is an irrational system. If you don’t believe this, then imagine employer-provided automobile or home insurance.
Do you know who I blame for an irrational system of the employer providing your health insurance? Our Federal government. During World War II they instituted price controls which did more damage than good (as always happens with price controls). Manufacturers who needed more labor to support the war effort were not allowed to raise wage rates to attract the labor. So they added benefits, the major one being health insurance, to lure more labor. Now we have been stuck with that poor system ever since.
Government is at the root of so many of our economic problems. Watch them create more problems with whatever bill they pass or whatever party’s bill it is.
Hey there, Rooster. Our health care system has worked extremely well for me so far, so I don't want to wreck it either. But there are persistent trends that make it clear something will have to be done to alter health care finance in the U.S. or the system will wreck itself.
I've heard the price control story and I believe it, up to a point. It helps explain why health insurance caught on as a fringe benefit in a few industries with labor shortages during the war. That was 65 years ago, though, so there have to be other reasons why it grew to be the nearly universal form of health insurance in the U.S. I'm inclined to believe that it stuck around because for a long time it successfully met most people's needs. There was a time when most people stayed with the same employer throughout their careers, when the cost of coverage was only a small fraction of wages, and when the expense entailed by most illness or accident was incurred within a short time. There was far less of what we now call pre-existing conditions because there was less medicine could do for heart disease, liver failure, COPD, many cancers, kidney disease, arthritic joints, and all the other illnesses we've learned to treat with expensive, long-term therapies, either continuous or periodic. What we really need protection from now is not the possibility of a large one-time expense, but from an event that triggers a stream of expenses that can last the rest of our lives. That is wrecking the employment-based model, because a current employer and insurer don't want to cover a lifetime of care, and future employers and insurers don't want to pick it up in midstream. We now have a mismatch between means and ends, mostly because medicine has more to offer than it once did.
What impresses me about the current proposals, ignoring the minor variations among them, is how conservative they are, in the sense of trying to preserve as much as possible of the status quo. They're plugging the leaks, not building a new boat. There is a surprising similarity between what the Democrats propose today and what Richard Nixon asked Congress for more than 35 years ago. I don't often quote Nixon admiringly, but here is what he thought we needed in 1972. It's long, and I have selected from it to make my point, but the full speech is at
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3757.
This proposal for a comprehensive national health insurance program, in which the public and private sector would join, would guarantee that no American family would have to forego needed medical attention because of inability to pay.
My plan would fill gaps in our present health insurance coverage. But, beyond that, it would redirect our entire system to better and more efficient ways of bringing health care to our people.
There are two critical parts of this Act:
1. The National Health Insurance Standards Act would require employers to provide adequate health insurance for their employees, who would share in underwriting its costs. This approach follows precedents of long-standing under which personal security--and thus national economic progress--has been enhanced by requiring employers to provide minimum wages and disability and retirement benefits and to observe occupational health and safety standards.
***
The national standards prescribed, moreover, would necessarily limit the range within which benefits could vary. This provision would serve to sharpen competition and cost-consciousness among insurance companies seeking to provide coverage at the lowest overall cost.
Any time the Federal Government, in effect, prescribes and guarantees certain things it must take the necessary follow-through steps to assure that the interests of consumers and taxpayers are fully protected.
Accordingly, legislative proposals have been submitted to the Congress within recent weeks for regulating private health insurance companies, in order to assure that they can and will do the job, and that insurance will be offered at reasonable rates. In addition, States would be required to provide group-rate coverage for people such as the self-employed and special groups who do not qualify for other plans.
2. Another vital step in my proposed program is the Family Health Insurance Plan (FHIP) which would meet the needs of poor families not covered by the National Health Insurance Standards Act because they are headed by unemployed or self-employed persons whose income is below certain levels.
If it wasn't too socialist for Nixon it isn't too socialist for me, and we need it more now.
